Finally, Aliya Ghanem, the mother of Osama bin Laden, founder and leader of al-Qaeda, appeared in a Western media outlet seven years after the death of her son at his Abbottabad residential compound, to break her silence and speak about her son who kept the international intelligence services on their toes for more than a decade. What’s most interesting are the details she revealed about visiting her son in Afghanistan in 1999, two years before the September 11 attacks. On this exciting ...

Sources close to the family of Osama bin Laden told Asharq Al-Awsat on Monday that Iran lately interfered to send bin Laden’s son, Hamza, who lived with his mother in Tehran, to Afghanistan and not to Saudi Arabia, where the rest of his sons are staying. “A number of bin Laden’s sons, their wives and their sons already returned from Tehran to Saudi Arabia,” the sources confirmed. Hamza is the son of Khairiah Sabar, one of bin Laden's three surviving wives. Omar, 37, the ...

In an article published on Sunday, British newspaper The Guardian reported that Hamza Bin Laden, the son of the late al-Qaeda leader, married the daughter of Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker in the 9/11 terror attacks. Research undergone by Al Arabiya English has found this to be false. Hamza bin Laden is, however, confirmed to have married the daughter of al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah, who is deputy to current leader Ayman al-Zawahri. Abdullah is nicknamed ...

Since the late 1990s, Osama bin Laden was deliberating with the board members of the organization about the “dream operation” he intended to execute, while whispering in the ears of his assistants that his plan can change the course of history.The third man of al-Qaeda and chief adviser Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, aka Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, narrates that he had intense debates with Osama. Al-Qaeda’s mufti had refused the execution of these operations for pure Sharia reasons. The US ...

Alia Ghanem, Osama bin Laden’s mother, has said in an interview to British media that her son “became a different man” during his university days. According to her, one of the men he met there was Abdullah Azzam, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was later exiled from Saudi Arabia and became Osama’s spiritual adviser. In her first interview, Alia Ghanem, now in her mid-70s, told The Guardian: “He met some people who pretty much brainwashed him in his early 20s. ...

The government can’t strip a terrorist of his US citizenship, a federal judge ruled this month in a decision siding with a Pakistan-born man serving the last few years of a 20-year prison sentence for his guilty plea to plotting to destroy New York’s Brooklyn Bridge. The case involves Iyman Faris, who was sentenced in 2003 for aiding and abetting al-Qaida by scoping out the bridge as part of a plot to cut through cables that support it. His case was among the first and ...

Tunisian authorities said on Friday they are interrogating Tunisian national Sami al-Aidoudi, believed to have once been Osama bin Laden's bodyguard, as soon as he entered the country after being deported by German authorities where he had been living in the past 20 years. Sufian al-Sulaiti, a spokesman for Tunisia’s counter-terrorism apparatus said the German authorities “deported a Tunisian citizen called Sami in accordance with an Interpol warrant issued by Tunisia,” ...

A suspected radical who once served as Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard, was detained in Germany on Monday, police said. The case of the Tunisian man, Sami A., sparked outrage in April after German media reported that he was receiving welfare benefits even though intelligence agencies have classified him as a potential threat. Authorities in the western city of Bochum had asked police to detain Sami A. and the man did not resist, a spokesman for police there said. Top-selling newspaper Bild ...

A senior military source told Al Arabiya English Libyan armed forces have arrested Abu Sufian bin Qumu on Saturday during a raid on one of the last strongholds of the extremist groups in Derna.The source said that He said that bin Qumu was arrested after his group ran out of ammunition while resisting outside their hideout.Bin Qumu, 59, is considered one of the most prominent leaders of al-Qaeda, where he emigrated from the country after leaving his regular work in the Libyan state in the early ...

Afghan-Arab Mustafa Hamed, is Al-Qaeda’s most prominent historian and is blacklisted by the US Treasury. Also known as Abu al-Walid al-Masri, he emerged from Tehran to resume his activity in lecturing radical groups through his website named "Mafa" earlier this year. Back to Tehran from Qatar Abu al-Walid, a friend of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri friend, willingly left Qatar in 2016 and went to Tehran to live there with his children. Abu al-Walid, who is the father-in ...